Leon Goretzka: His amazing DFB comeback

Large careers often hardly end up noticeable, they simply fade. Who could name the moment when Thomas Müller became a stand-by player from FC Bayern’s top-by-game player? There is no moment, the life’s work of Müller is far too massive to reduce itself to a single missed scene.

With Leon Goretzka, however, Müller’s teammates in Munich are different. The fracture in his career can be precisely dated, and exactly for the day and the hour, even for the minute.

This says a lot about Goretzka, which they once trusted in Munich like that of Müller and therefore gave him a lavish contract for allegedly almost 18 million euros per season.

The day that changed everything for Leon Goretzka was November 23, 2022. Khalifa International Stadium, Qatar, World Cup group game Germany against Japan. In the 67th minute, Germany leads 1-0, national coach Hansi Flick takes the goal scorer Ilkay Gündogan off the field and brings Leon Goretzka. A change that does not follow any playful necessity, as Flick will later explain, but was intended as a honorary offering of Goretzka. “I wanted to show Leon that he belongs and that he is not a bank player,” said Flick later.

As soon as Goretzka is on the pitch, the German game changes. Order and structure are lost – not because Goretzka made serious mistakes, but because Gündogan, the playmaker, lacks his ideas.

Germany loses 1: 2. The team no longer recovers from this defeat; A point against Spain and three against Costa Rica mean third place in the group-and the premature World Cup.

After failing in Qatar, Goretzka is suddenly another. At FC Bayern, his achievements become weaker and weaker, and it also crises in the club, coach Julian Nagelsmann is released and replaced by Thomas Tuchel.

Goretzka largely withdraws from the public. Of all things, he who had given the foreign minister of the DFB in the months before the World Cup. Human rights, the persecution of homosexuals, lack of press and freedom of expression- Goretzka spoke informed on many stages and critically about the World Cup host Qatar. He even had his own media consultant with political expertise at his side (it was the consultant who had controlled Olaf Scholz’s campaign in the 2021 Bundestag election).

The clever words for which Goretzka had been praised in the media were used against him after the World Cup. Instead of trying to save the world, he should have saved German football, it said. Goretzka, the one-man NGO, was considered failed.

You have to think all of this when Leon Goretzka returns to the German national team these days, almost a year and a half after his last nomination in autumn 2023.

Goretzka, 30, went a long way, and his backpack weighed lead. Quite a few in the football industry already thought he was a hopeless case; FC Bayern even publicized him for sale last year. Hardly any operations, but an exorbitant high salary, even the well -known Munichers didn’t want to afford themselves.

But now Goretzka is asked again, both at FC Bayern and in the national team. A little miracle. It has to do with the injury situation in position eight in front of the defense chain (Aleksandar Pavlovic and Felix Nmecha fail in the DFB team), but also with the recently strong performance of the Bochum native Goretzka.

He fought his way back, and this in a quiet, persistent way. He hasn’t given longer interviews for a long time, at most one or two sentences after games. Empty stuff for which he used to be ashamed.

But this self-shortage and the humans are likely to have reinforced national coach Nagelsmann to appoint Goretzka for the two National League games against Italy (Thursday, 8.45 p.m./ARD and Sunday, 8:45 p.m./RTL).

Nagelsmann has divided his squad into three groups: The artists around Florian Wirtz and Jamal Musiala are there, there is the upscale central building with players like Joshua Kimmich, Jonathan Tah or Antonio Rüdiger, and there are so -called workers like Robert Andrich or David Raum.

For Goretzka there was no more space in the DFB team, nor for Mats Hummels. Nagelsmann feared that the two might be able to register claims due to previous successes and then sitting on the bench nagging. That is why Nagelsmann did not take her to the European Championship last year.

These worries no longer press the national coach. With Goretzka, he had an “open, clarifying conversation”, said Nagelsmann when announcing the squad, but without revealing what role he will advise for Goretzka in the future.

If the strikingly frequently suffered or injured Aleksandar Pavlovic (FC Bayern) healthy and if Angelo Stiller (Stuttgart) and Felix Nmecha (Dortmund) continue to convince in their clubs, it should be tight for Goretzka with a view to the 2026 World Cup. Pavlovic, 20, Stiller, 23, and Nmecha, 24, belongs to the future at the DFB; Goretzka, on the other hand, is still a player from the Löw and Flick era.

Although they could already use Goretzka at the national team – in principle. The 2030 World Cup takes place in Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Of course, it would be an advantage if the DFB would be a foreign minister who can provide a political analysis for every host country.

Transparency note: The star is part of RTL Germany.